Sunday, April 15, 2012

Nietzsche is Dead, Jesus Lives

A common mistake I hear people make is to say Jesus was not judgmental...

He stopped the stoning of the woman caught in adultery, he blessed the woman at the well who had so many husbands, and he ate and and drank with tax collectors and sinners.

Yes, he did all those things, and he did them out of love and mercy in order to get people to repent and change their ways. The New Testament is full of stories of him forgiving; outraging the Pharisaically-minded by giving away forgiveness. Giving it away! But such episodes invariably end with some command of repentance such as "go and sin no more." So he was judgmental, but he preached repentance, a sorrow for past sins and a firm resolve to not return to them.

A philosopher names Jesus...

Religious liberals have been raving for decades about conservative Christians who think they have the market cornered, and I can understand their anger. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, God is not on anybody's "side." We mortals hope and pray that we are on his side. A smaller subset of religious progressives take it even further:

“The ‘death of God’ is a metaphor. We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God.” The “possibility” here is a moral, not a transcendent one. (Death of a Theologian)

There are some who would strip Jesus of his divinity and make him a wisdom guru as they perform a Jeffersonian excision of his miracles from the gospel narratives. What that leaves them with is a stern, crusading progressive-era morality of social justice with which to beat conservatives over the heads in a nice turn of vengeful religious zealotry devoid of all the superstition.

The Death of God Theology

They all agreed that the traditional God of the Biblical tradition was no longer credible. Hamilton believed that Christians should forget about the hope of heaven, instead concentrate on understanding this world and doing good in it, thus presumably following the moral teachings of Jesus. He understood the death of God as a cosmic process of God’s emptying himself into the world he created; an ancient Christian term for this has been the kenosis of God, his voluntary humiliation in order to redeem the fallen world. Altizer saw the culminating of the kenosisin the crucifixion of Jesus—at which point God merges with the natural world and no longer confronts it as a transcendent being. (Death of a Theologian)

Barron zoomed in on Sullivan's favorable mention of Thomas Jefferson's Gospel edits that removed all mention of the supernatural:

Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle, to give just two examples among many, present Jesus, not as the God-man risen from the dead, but rather as a New Age guru.

The first problem with this type of theorizing is that it has little to do with the New Testament. As Jefferson's Bible makes clear, the excision of references to the miraculous, to the resurrection, and to the divinity of Jesus delivers to us mere fragments of the Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were massively interested in the miracles and exorcisms of Jesus and they were positively obsessed with his dying and rising. The Gospels have been accurately characterized as "passion narratives with long introductions."

Further, the earliest Christian texts that we have are the epistles of St. Paul, and in those letters that St. Paul wrote to the communities he founded, there are but a tiny handful of references to the teaching of Jesus. What clearly preoccupied Paul was not the moral doctrine of Jesus, but the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. (Andrew Sullivan's Non-Threatening Jesus)

I Believe

Jack Camwell mocked my belief in Satan, but yes, I really believe he is "The God of this World." Both the Old Testament and New Testament contain too many accounts of him, including him speaking, to just discount it as a silly superstition or mental illness. It's a complete package. Good and Evil. Divine and Mortal. Practical and Mysterious.

Strip it of the evil, the divine, and the mysterious, and all you have left is a sterile, didactic set of ambiguous rules that men use to torment one another with.

34 comments:

If we are going to oppose something, it would be a good idea to understand what it is -- or at least what it is supposed to be.

Almost whimsically I typed "Nietszsche in a Nutshell?" into Google, just to see what I might find, and many items came up. Why was I not surprised?

At any rate, after scanning three or four items very quickly, I came across the following, read it, and thought it explained the basic issues and challenges surrounding Nietzsche and his worldview pretty well -- a good point of departure at least:

http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Nietzsche.htm

I don't see the (rather lengthy) article as polemical. It explains rather than espouses.

The fundamental premise of the whole thing is that "Reason" drives out "Superstition," and, therefore, renders the existence of God impossible.

In other words "Reason" is ALL we have to rely on. Everything else is an "illusion."

Rather than simply deny that categorically with simple-minded vehemence, because many of us "just can't stand it," why not try to use "Reason" to defeat the proposition that God is either "dead," or that He never could have lived in the first place?

Repeating platitudes, well worn shibboleths, and various quotations from the Bible provide an inadequate defense against the attack and intellectual challenges presented since Science became THE dominant factor in the post-Darwinian world in which we live.

Responding merely with anger and annoyance that anyone dare challenge the faith is singularly inappropriate, if we hope to meet the increasing aggressiveness and growing power of modern atheism with positive effect.

Jesus Christ does not need us to defend Him, but we need to defend Him for our sakes, if we hope to build a future for our children and grandchildren in which a wholesome, pleasant, constructive experience might still be possible.

I can't accept a belief in a material Satan, Silver, any more than I can accept that a demon was causing a boy's epilepsy and was cast out as written in some gospels.

The rules of religion do seem didactic. If anything would get me in a more conventional relationship with the Catholic church it would be the repeal of the ban on birth control. It seems to me to be there to remind us that all Churches are human institutions.

Meanwhile, I often use art to "get me on my knees" as it were. Giotto is a lot more effective than Pat Robertson or Benedict. Sometimes it does.

If you had not known me, you would not seek me. So I remain like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

And just what is the state of my belief? Hard to say but I know I do not let man judge it.

It's all too easy to say, "By their fruits shall ye know them," but in Nietzsche's case it may be appropriate. He was brilliant, a disciplined scholar, a remarkably powerful writer, yet his life could only be described as miserable -- an utter failure in the worldly terms he eloquently championed -- and he died at 56 -- alone, unloved and unsung in his own time, if that matters.

From the article I cited on Nietzsche:

Around 1879 Nietzsche became chronically ill, and he retired from teaching on a moderate pension. During the following ten years he wrote in rapid succession all the books which were to make him posthumously famous--Human, All Too Human; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; The Gay Science; The Case of Wagner; Beyond Good and Evil; The Antichrist; Twilight of the Idols and more.

During most of this time he was physically in miserable condition. He had no permanent residence, preferring to take up temporary lodgings in various places in the Swiss Alps or on the Mediterranean coast.

He grew increasingly critical and contemptuous of Germany—at a time when Germany tried to rival such world powers as England and France by way of aggressive military and industrial expansion.

Because of his near-blindness his doctors advised him to abstain from reading, but he kept reading and writing at a furious pace as best as he could. He fought his insomnia with opiates and Veronal, drugs that upset his delicate stomach. He frequently suffered from migraine headaches that prompted him to experiment with further drugs.

He endured, partly by choice, a loneliness that included both social isolation and a general misunderstanding of his philosophical ideas even among friends.

At the beginning of 1889 he suffered a major collapse that resulted in permanent insanity--possibly the consequence of untreated syphilis ..."

Of course Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann had difficult lives, and all died young. Beethoven was the oldest ding at age 57. But look at the splendid legacy each of the left!

I agree with Ducky that art -- particularly musical art of the highest quality -- does more to sustain my belief in God and the saving power of Jesus Christ than readings from the Bible or sermons filled either with platitudes or stern denials that earthly life has any positive value whatsoever.

" ... Nietzsche had been brought up within a Christian tradition according to which the body was something base, filthy, or evil, and in many theological analyses the very center of depravity and sin. Throughout his adult years Nietzsche was in revolt against this tradition, and the reconstitution of the body as something wonderful and as a source of great achievements can be described as one of the main aims of Nietzsche's entire philosophy. ..."

This, of course, is something that was imposed on the teachings of Jesus by authoritarian personalities who too what-had-been a "movement," then organized and founded the Church, which quickly became a self-serving, self-perpetuating, strongly temporal, quasi-governmental institution -- and a tremendously profitable business.

Teaching people to despise themselves and deny every natural impulse as vile, impure, wicked, destructive of one's best interests in the nebulous after life and punishable by possible ostracism, torture or death by fire is a powerful tool in the effort of any hierarchy to maintain "social control."

Unfortunately, in attempting to free ourselves from this terrible misunderstanding of Jesus Christ's mission, we have been in the process of throwing the baby out with the bath water for the past hundred years or more.

The descent into primitive Chaos, which seems to be where we are headed at rocket speed in my never humble opinion, is hardly a desirable -- or a "rational" -- alternative to the brutal oppression of a worldly, hypocritical, self-serving authoritarian theocracy.

It is perfectly consistent and intellectually honest to recognize, and adhere to, the ethical teachings of Jesus, without any care for the supernatural mythology of the Bible.

It's not that there Jesus is morphed into some New Age guru, but quite the opposite - a classical philosopher. With the teachings of Jesus one can add Confucius, Siddhartha Guatama, Aristotle, and many more, all emerging around the same historical period with remarkably similar ideas.

In the ethical teachings of Jesus there was a new, modern, liberal and liberated way of thinking and acting. But this was long ago, and the religion of Jesus became a political and theocratic behemoth over time, with countless variant sects, each dining on different items on the Biblical buffet. Ethical Christianity is inherently a liberal way of thinking, while the church and the mythologies are inherently conservative. It is in this duality that people argue over whether conservatism or liberalism are more or less "christian" than one another.

But to say we Jeffersonian Christians are somehow intellectually dishonest would be also to say that every single sect of Christianity is also intellectually dishonest - including your's.

Jersey: You take offense awfully easy. I didn't call anyone intellectually dishonest. I didn't even attack "Jeffersonian" Christians. I thought the "Death of a Theologian" article was interesting and thought I'd share it with others. It actually helped me understand your point of view better, even though I do not agree with it.

I think I'm treating other points of view the I disagree with with respect.

I don't understand your need to be belligerent even when it's not called for.

Jersey: Now I'll give you something to be belligerent about. Your view that Christianity is liberal and religion is conservative is simplistic.

Christianity was a radical break from Judaism, so in one way it could be considered classically liberal, but Jesus himself brought very difficult teachings, and again using the classical definition, breaking from his teachings would be considered liberal; adhering to them would make you religiously conservative, leaving politics out of it, because I think we agree it doesn't belong.

Silver, I have no idea why you read "belligerence" or "offense" into what I wrote. Weird. I didn't feel the least bit offended or angry.

I was just making observations, that the ethical teaching of Jesus are very socially liberal. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches many socially illiberal, conservative, even regressive ethics, and that every way of interpreting the Bible leads to buffet religion and/or philosophy. It has to. There are too many contradictions in the Bible itself, let alone between religion and the real world, for Christianity in any form to not be buffet.

Further to my point about the conservatism of the Christian religion as opposed to the actual, liberal teachings Jesus, the Take Paul on homosexuality, or Pious IX's Papal Infallibility and the banning of abortion. These are conservative teachings, but have no direct emanation from Jesus.

Where you get "classical liberalism" or that Christianity was a "radical break" from Judaism, I'm not sure. Neither am I sure why you'd even try to keep politics out of all this, as there are unavoidable political consequences and implications in all this. In fact, you're particular way of looking at Christianity as a "radical break" from Judaism, as it was theologically not, but rather was politically, and the way you bring up "classical liberalism" a wholly secular, political, economic philosophy.

Liberal and conservative have no place in this discussion. They have been sullied by decades of abuse on all sides.

Christianity was indeed a radical break from Judaism, I don't know how you could claim otherwise.

So you're saying the Apostle Paul did not faithfully hand on Jesus' teachings? Interesting...

As for abortion and homosexuality, I'll refer you again for the thousandth time to the Didache.

You may not agree with it, but it is historical evidence of the beliefs and practices of the apostles themselves.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html

Here is commentary on it.

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/early-teachings-on-homosexuality

If you seriously want to claim that the apostles, the evangelists, and Paul did not faithfully hand on what they were taught, then all of it is in question and you may as well chuck it all over the side.

You've staggered outside of your lane again, Jersey. You're entitled to you beliefs, but you are not entitled to distort history.

"Liberal and conservative have no place in this discussion. They have been sullied by decades of abuse on all sides."

I don't think we're abusing the terms here, and your post had a lot to do with them.

"Christianity was indeed a radical break from Judaism, I don't know how you could claim otherwise."

Well, it became a perhaps a "radical break" from Judaism later on. It certainly didn't have to be a break, per se, but such was it's evolution in the history around it. The early church saw itself as a branch of Judaism, and to this day Judaism plays a foundational role in Christian theology.

There was certainly a political break with Judaism, as Jesus felt the church should be above political and other secular affairs, while the Jews of that time were essentially theocrats.

So you're saying the Apostle Paul did not faithfully hand on Jesus' teachings?"

No. I'm saying the way Paul structured the early church went beyond any direct teaching of Christ. Paul was the first Christian dogmatist. Whether Jesus was as dogmatic as Paul is unknown, but it is unlikely. Jesus' ostensible humility wouldn't fit with that.

"As for abortion and homosexuality, I'll refer you again for the thousandth time to the Didache."

I don't care you what piece of shit dogma you present. Abortion was widely accepted in the Christian world as a private, rather common, social ill, until only the mid-19th century. It doesn't matter what some fucking 2000 year old document says. You're both trifling here, and proving my point. The Didache is not scripture, and does not reflect anything ever said by Christ when it comes to abortion. It is the church.

"If you seriously want to claim that the apostles, the evangelists, and Paul did not faithfully hand on what they were taught, then all of it is in question and you may as well chuck it all over the side."

No. That would be silly. But if you seriously believe the writers of the Bible actually ever even met Jesus, you'd be a fool.

"You've staggered outside of your lane again, Jersey. You're entitled to you beliefs, but you are not entitled to distort history."

Silver, the Israelites were a plinter sect of Canaanites. The early Christians were a splinter sect of that sect.

Catholicism did not take form until it was extensively Hellenized.

None of this history is pure and it gets more complicated when you trace the pagan elements in in early Catholicism. If you can find it watch Marketa Lazarova brilliant epic of the early melding of pagan and Christian religion.

Indeed it would be, but didn't you mean to say "Science v. Religion?" If so, I would expand that to Science v. Intuition, Instinct, Perception, etc. and there we find what-I-see-as the Fundamental Question of Our Time.

Are we nothing but matter and therefore governed entirely by material conditions, or is there Something More -- something beyond the grasp of what-scientists think of as fact-based reasoning?

Nietzsche thought Spirit did not exist that existence was enmeshed in and governed entirely by matter.

There is no way to measure the physical properties of such things as Affection, Loyalty, Courage, Honesty, Integrity, Perseverance, Yearning, Passion, Wisdom, Principle, Intelligence, Ambition, Shyness, Boldness, Modesty, Pride, Arrogance, Perception, etc. These things have no physical properties whatsoever, yet they shape and define the nature and quality of our lives.

And as you say in a ore scholarly fashion: the Doubters and Debunkers have never explained the Origin of the Cosmos or of the human, animal, vegetable and mineral life that inhabits it.

I believe that matter doesn't really exist except in the realm of our very limited perception. Just as we cannot experience microscopic phenomena at one end of the scale or telescopic phenomena at the other with the naked eye, neither can we see, hear, smell taste of feel "the things that God hath prepared for those who love Him.

I believe Science, though its mundane minions may not realize it, is searching for God, because in the purest sense GOD IS TRUTH.

>We can't prove God exists and the Dawkins crowd cannot prove how it all came to be ex nihilo.

At least there is a possibility of proving that God exists. Presenting God himself as evidence would be that proof.

On the other hand, to prove that God does not exist anywhere, you would have to have the ability to see into every particle of space of every conceivable dimension of the infinity of space, all at the same time. (Something that, well, only God can do.)

That experience, of course, would only provide that individual with the knowledge of God's non-existence. To prove such non-existence, in the sense of demonstrating it to others, would require the ability to grant others the same power to see everything all at once, again a power that is outside mortal capabilities.

Those of us who have interacted with God (not necessarily seeing Him, but only a deeply arrogant individual would believe that only that which he can see exists) have proof of God's existence, of His nature, and of His purposes, all based on actual personal experience that cannot be simulated by psychological phenomena.

That same proof is also available to anyone else willing to do what is required for such experiences. Some people are teachable enough to go through that process; some would rather continue worshiping the god they have created in their own image, a very pitiful god indeed.

Ducky, you may identify yourself as a Catholic, but you are in fact a DEIST.

I hardly consider than a insult. You are in very good company.

I do, however, think your idea of God, as presented in Judaism and Christianity, is inaccurate, but it's late, and I'm not here to belabor the point.

Somewhere in the Nietzsche article I cited "We are what we eat" was quoted. I would go far beyond that and dare to say, "We ARE what we BELIEVE."

I would agree with anyone who said that forcing the acceptance of any sort of "belief" on anyone by threatening them with of loss of liberty or possible torture and death is not only illegitimate, it is wicked. Conversion by coercion -- bullying, browbeating, ostracism, threats of violence, etc. is completely unacceptable in my view.

Funny! Because of my work, first as a boy soprano, then as an organist and choirmaster, I've been heavily involved with church activities in many denominations -- including Roman Catholicism -- all my life, but I never heard of the DIDACHE until Kurt mentioned it here not long ago.

I guess we who try to be Christians owe it to ourselves to look it up.

I don't know if there's any way you could find it so long after broadcast and outside the UK, but I was quite captivated by Andy Hamilton's documentary about the devil (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ptr6), all about how the satan's role in theology (diabology?) was amplified by the early Christian church over centuries (I have not yet read a summary of the Didache, but that is obviously relevant). Satan's role in judaism is / was minimal, the name "satan" being derived from the Hebrew word for "interruption", so "get thee behind me, Satan" really means "enough thought, now to action."

"On the other hand, to prove that God does not exist anywhere, you would have to have the ability to see into every particle of space of every conceivable dimension of the infinity of space, all at the same time."

Depends entirely on how well specified this "god" you're talking about is.If you mean the vague "god" of the loose-minded spiritualist, then yes. On the other hand, most people consider that eg. a literal Garden of Eden or a literal global flood is in opposition to the remaining material evidence, so it therefore we can say that the God of any fundamentalist of an Abrahamic faith runs counter to that evidence.There maybe Nordic or Hindu gods that can't be so easily ruled out; I couldn't name more than a handful of them so I don't know.

I am 100 per cent Kantian so I reject the logic of Nietzsche from the start.

Though some whom read Kant superficially will say he rejects God as well, he most certainly did not. Kant is a great believer in Good versus Evil as well as the term "faith". What Kant will say about this is what he says about "reality", that we live based upon what we percieve but that may not be, necessarily in itself, the actual reality. Therefore, we in fact live much of our life based on faith assumed to be fact. Such philosophy is complex but I am a person that strongly believes in questioning the immediate reality to ensure that all aspects are confirmed and from all angles and acknowledging what is actually based on faith and the combination of the two is in fact my reality.

My reality is that there is God and that it is mostly based on faith and accepting that without compunction and complex rhetoric that in the end still comes down to Faith. Also that good and evil ulitmately is a part of life.

Nietzsche was incapable of that and rejected in most part the idea that there is good and evil. he would have you sit down and ask yourself constantly "and what is evil?" and when you say something like things that are bad he would ask you "what is bad?" and when you respond you get another question, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Jesus came to reveal the Truth of Being. He was perceived as a threat to the authorities of his time, and is still seen as a threat to all who would deny the existence of Spirit (God) and believe in the supremacy of Matter. It is a Sign of His great power that His enemies rise against Him still with brute savagery and the sophistry and ever growing clamor and din from "intellectuals."

He came to free our lives INDIVIDUALLY by transforming us INTERNALLY -- i.e. radically altering the way we perceive and relate to the material world.

He certainly did no come to found yet-another self-serving authoritarian temporal organization, but human beings, who too easily gravitate towards tyranny, have been very slow to "get" His message, and so we've had what we've had.

Jesus Christ, however, is ABOVE all earthly cares. He has never died. He has been with us always -- "In the Beginning there was the Word..." Jesus is the Word of God incarnate -- made flesh.

The significance of His existence is METAPHYSICAL. Any attempt to find Salvation through material means is doomed to failure.

One of the most evil things is this concept that we should not judge one another. Many cultural Marxists have use this call to never judge one another to guilt anyone who dares speak out against any form o0f evil.

We have to make judgements everyday. When I lock my door because I am leery of my meth using neighbors down the road, I am making a judgement. When an employer chooses not to hire someone, they are making a judgement.

The judgements we need to avoid are those reserved for God. To think in your heart that person is going to hell is wrong. But to say what that person is doing is wrong, is something we all must do.

The Founding Fathers and those who fought in the Continental Army were our original Western Heroes, guided by the thinkers of the Enlightenment and following in the footsteps of great warriors like Jan Sobieski and Charles Martel.